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The New York Times’ Paltry Response to Petraeus
By Michael Weiss / September 11, 2007
The New York Times' editors reply to Gen. Petraeus's report:
The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity.
Oh, please. The surge was always defined as a temporary escalation of military forces — allied with a completely new strategy for waging counterinsurgency operations — to bring the violence in Iraq to a more manageable level; i.e., to quell the civil war that's been raging since the Golden Mosque bombing. Announcing that, with some measurable improvements in on-the-ground conditions, the U.S. is now ready to withdraw some of those military forces is by no means a shambolic trophy claim of the surge, as the editors sneeringly describe it. It's what the surge was about all along. More NYT bilge:
The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.
In this language, a positive unintended consequence of the surge is to be downplayed because it's good news the war strategists failed to anticipate! No accounting in here for the fact that the dramatic about-face in Anbar happened after the infusion an entire Military Regiment into the region.
And actually, it's disingenuous to suggest that turning popular opinion against Al Qaeda was never part of the plan. Here is Gen. Petraeus in his Counterinsurgency Manual, explaining why it is typically so difficult for a country like the U.S. to earn the good faith of an occupied citizenry:
Americans start with an automatic disadvantage because of their reputation for accomplishment, what some call the “man on the moon syndrome.” This refers to the expressed disbelief that a nation that can put a man on the moon cannot quickly restore basic services. U.S. agencies trying to fan enthusiasm for their efforts should also avoid making exorbitant promises. In some cultures, failure to deliver promised results is automatically interpreted as deliberate deception, not good intentions gone awry. In other cultures, exorbitant promises are the norm, and people do not expect them to be kept. So counterinsurgents must understand these local norms and employ locally tailored approaches to ensure expectations are controlled. Managing expectations also involves demonstrating economic and political progress to show the populace how life is improving. Increasing the number of people who feel they have a stake in the success of the state and its government is a key to successful COIN. In the final judgment, victory comes by convincing the people that their life will be better under the government than under the insurgent. [Italics added.]
One could argue that the Marines had absolutely nothing to do with the sheiks' newfound loathing of Al Qaeda, which is its own advertisement in misery and subjugation. (Though, again, the timing of their about-face is curious.) However, if the one force those sheiks are willing to turn to in getting rid of the jihadist nasties is the government-backed Marines, then clearly, life under the government has proven, at least for the short term, to be better than life under the insurgent.
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Michael Douglas Weiss:
Well, sure, everyone acknowledges that disbanding the Iraqi army was one of the biggest disasters of the war. And, of course, that army had plenty of blood on their hands. And I, like every serious person, know that we’re going to have to deal with a lot of unsavory characters if we’re going to cobble a country as big and messy as Iraq back together, no question…
I’m more concerned about the “success” of flipping the Sunni tribes in Anbar for three main reasons, though.
1) They were — up until a few months ago — extremely proactive in their violence.
While plenty of people were forced into Saddam’s army (or the Baath party) because there were no viable alternatives, the real source of loyalty to Saddam was his Republican Guard. The rest of the Army? Not so much. They were afraid of Saddam, to be sure, and they carried out his orders but they also seemed to turn tail whenever the encountered an American; be it in 2003 or 1991. (And this was the tragic part of disbanding the army: They were so ready to work with us.)
But the Sunnis who are a part of the insurgency are not fighting for Saddam — they’re fighting for a much more abstract ideal: Sunni supremacy (a millennium-old privilege, which won’t disappear from the collective Sunni unconscious any time soon). And this has roped in not just Saddam’s elite thugs; thousands have been fighting for this — bravely, without regard to personal safety. (And, sure, they’re brave — just like Confederate soldiers were. Even if they’re fighting for a repulsive cause.)
When you see people acting as human bombs to destroy other people (and I know this is GENERALLY more of an AQM technique) it speaks to their determination. And their willingness to absorb pain. It seems more dangerous (to me, anyway) than Saddam’s conscripted drones (most of whom didn’t want to be there.)
2) Whether the Sunnis work with us to defeat AQM or not, they’re still going to have to have some sort of ultimate showdown with the Shiites. That problem is not going away, even if we do. It’s only a matter of time before there’s some sort of violent realignment.
3) Their willingness to work with us does NOT say to me is that they’re ready for some kind of democratic participation. That doesn’t seem to be a part of it — at least not yet. It says to me that they’re secularists. That hardly means democratic.
The most grownup article on all the contradictions and travails of the surge and for the future of Iraq is George Packer’s piece in the New Yorker this week. I think there’s no salvaging this… to stay is a disaster. To leave is a disaster. So far, I haven’t seen real evidence of the surge working on a long term basis. If it were, I would be in favor of keeping it up, but I think the chances of success are so low that I’d like to set a timetable and get out of there as soon as humanly possible.
Sorry I haven’t called you, pal. Soon.
Good to hear from you, however impersonally through blogging.
My response to Petraeus' testimony can be read here. I don't think his report was a "godsend," or even all that enthusiastic about current conditions in Iraq. But again, my cautionary note is this: The surge is not even halfway completed, and its main goal — at least judging by the COIN manual and the Kagan-Keane white paper — was to create enough breathing room for political reconciliation to take place. That the Maliki regime is nowhere near this is dire and alarming, but I still think it's premature to write the obits on a military strategy that has yet to reach its projected end-point. If, by next July, violence is the same or only nominally improved, then surge will have definitively failed.
Your concerns about arming the Sunni tribesmen are well taken. They're also my own. See my note to another critical blogger here. However, we have to realize that one of the most commonly sighted blunders of the CPA was its first move: to disband the Iraqi Army, an army which had, in Gulf War I, been killing American soldiers at the behest of a fascist dictator. If we now agree that retaining some of those forces would have helped keep the country together after the invasion, we're also acknowledging that dangerous, American-killing enemies would have to have become allies of convenience. Ditto for the Sadrists who have now been elected to control key ministries in the Baghdad government.
The same holds true — although, I'll admit, to more a precarious level — in our current situation in Anbar. But assuming the Sunnis there are fed up with Al Qaeda enough to ask our troops for help in destroying it, then we have to entertain the possibility that they're ready to participate in democratic government. What's the alternative? Salting the earth? Cordoning off this region from the rest of Iraq?
One of the questions I kept waiting for someone to ask in yesterday’s hearings (I only dipped back and forth today — so I have no idea whether it was asked or not) was: Isn’t anybody worried that “flipping” Sunni insurgents to our side in Anbar and relying on them to provide long term security a trifle… precarious?
I, for one, don’t want to have to depend on thugs who have spent the last four years blowing up Americans and Shiites and kidnapping children for anything. I’d call that an extremely bad bet. The Times at least sort of acknowledged this — they described this alliance as possibly “ephemeral”, which strikes me as a gross understatement.
History is replete with examples of how convenient allies have turned on each other when the moment is ripe — ruthlessly and remorselessly. Look next door at Iran. The revolution wasn’t, at first, entirely religious. While the Ayatollah Khomeini was certainly the inspirational figure, there were plenty of trade unions and communists who joined in, only to be butchered later.
While I agree with you, Mike, that The Times might be petty in discounting a very important development to our future success or failure in Iraq (who cares, really, if it was intended or not) it’s the wrong thing to be concerned about. There’s plenty of other things. Yesterday’s hearings were, by and large, a disgrace. (Today’s were somewhat better.)
Petraeus claimed that the surge was working, and nobody bothered to remind him (at least when I was watching) that almost none of the goals he had set at the beginning of the surge had been met. While it’s certainly a good thing that security has improved (somewhat), the complete political failure of the Maliki government is what Congress should be talking about. (They talked about it somewhat more today.)
While the right wing media outlets have jumped on Petraeus testimony as a godsend, I would be extremely wary — we’ve heard this kind of optimism before. It needs to be viewed skeptically — especially given the fact that there are so many holes to be poked through it. Kudos to the Times for not taking good news at face value. It has a tendency to get us in trouble over there.
Yo Michael,
The NYT response was indeed paltry, but your response is far worse. You appear to be trying to defend the surge and insult the NYT, as if these two positions are somehow related. I could heap insults on the NYT all day (and frequently do) but your position on the surge is beyond absurd. This sort of facile bull$hit is an indicator of why the rest of the world is more terrified of the US than any so-called terrorists.
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